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Brian McRitchie

Growth and Trend on the Oil and Gas Sector

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Edited by Brian George McRitchie, Monday, 15 Nov 2021, 15:22

With reference to Unit 1 - Session 2, Activity 2.4, there are a number of questions that can be answered in order to justify my Organisational Context.

  1. What is the general developmental trend of the sector? The Oil and Gas sector could be thought of as 'in decline'. However, this could not be further from the truth.  Although oil price dictates how well many of these organisations do, the overall oil industry is in somewhat of a major change as they all accept that an 'Energy Transition' is underway. As a result many have ambitious growth projections over the next several years where they are shifting their technology, innovation, R&D and the work they are going after away from fossil fuels, which itself is in decline. Any oil and gas company that choses to do nothing and stick with the same will eventually indeed die. That said, technology and innovation is also ensuring that oil that could not normally be extracted is now becoming profitable as many companies look to technology to get at this, once, impossible oil wells.  Oil companies are therefore all going through numerous restructures and reforms to ensure they are ready to exploit the different sectors within the renewables and industrial sectors as the next generation energy supply. 

  2. What are the main changes or issues within this sector and organisational context? Many oil companies are suffering from a major skills shortage. This is as a result of us coming out of (or are still in) a global pandemic.  This caused an oil and gas downturn just as they were recovering from a previous one. The furlough scheme and some deciding to leave the industry has caused recruitment to be difficult which has recently started in droves. As these ambitious growth strategies continue and processes/procedures and the way we do business changes to suit the future, there is major stress on these businesses as they rely on smaller resource to carry out their normal business as usual (BAU) process yet start making changes for a future without fossil fuels. As a result (using my organisation as an example) these changes are 'talk' with trying to keep BAU going overtaking as 'the' priority. As we start winning work within the renewables and industrial sectors, the organisation is forced to use old processes and a reduced amount of resource. This is not sustainable in the long run. 

  3. What is the role of your organisation (or the organisation in which you are interested) in the whole sector? Identify the key business partners and relationships between your chosen organisation and others in the sector. The organisation in which I work are a services company to the oil and gas industry. Their primary focus is on delivering engineering solutions to the main oil companies (BP, Shell, Schlumberger, Exxon, Aramco etc etc). This can be from basic maintenance of offshore cranes to complex automation and control systems for safety critical systems on oil and gas platforms or sea going marine vessels. As a result of the expertise the organisation has, they are able to deliver this as an entirely 'in-house' delivery, meaning that all design, project management, HSE, build and delivery and installation on the asset can be carried out all by us. This, is becoming more and more difficult as a result of the resources and the fact that clients are now looking for more cost saving and efficient delivery. My organisation work with all major companies, such as Siemens, Bosch Rexroth, Schnieider in order to develop, design and build the required technology. The organisation also works with numerous supply chains (as I write this they are also effected by the pandemic and a worldwide shortage of semi-conductors, drivers and other resource issues, including huge backlogs). Another major relationship is that between our sales and business development team and the respirocal teams within these big oil companies of which we do so much business with.  However, as we move to more renewables and industrial clients, we are looking at partnerships with others such as the nuclear industry and the Ministry of Defence (MOD). 






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Joanne Pearson

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Thanks Brian good contextual detail here and you will be able to condense some of this to use for TMA01 too - just ensure you then link it to the theories as well many thanks Joanne